Anna Strhan and Abby Day in Religious Studies at Kent are co-organising a BSA Socrel / HEA symposium alongside Paul-Francois Tremlett from the Open University.
The symposium will take place in Imperial Wharf London on the 13th December, and is on the topic of the understanding of Religion and the Secular in Education.
Religions today are implicated in a wide variety of publics. From contests over the environment and democracy to protests against capitalism, religions remain important factors in political and public life across diverse, and interconnected, global contexts. A variety of diverse responses have been articulated to the so-called ‘return of religion’ in the public sphere, drawing into question relations between the religious, the non-religious and the secular. As scholars have developed new theoretical understandings of the terms of these debates and questioned how these are bound up with cultural conceptualizations of citizenship, education – in schools, universities and less formal educational contexts – has often been a site where contestations of the religious and the secular have been acutely felt. The aim of this symposium is to consider the interrelation between conceptions of the religious, the secular, citizenship and education, and to explore how these issues affect the study of religion in higher education.
To find out more about how participants from a variety of disciplines and contexts have engaged with these issues, join us on December 13 at the BSA Meeting Room in London, for a BSA Socrel symposium, organized by Paul-François Tremlett (Open University), Anna Strhan (University of Kent) and Abby Day (University of Kent and Chair of Socrel). It won’t be your usual ‘stand-and-deliver’ event. Our presenters are working hard to condense their work into short summaries that will be distributed to all participants in advance of the day via e-mail. All participants will be expected to read the summaries and come prepared for a full day of engaging in vibrant exchanges across disciplines, countries, methods and other conventional boundaries.
For any further information, please contact Anna Strhan (A.H.B.Strhan@kent.ac.uk), and Abby Day (A.F.Day@kent.ac.uk).
The full programme will be published on the BSA Socrel website: http://www.socrel.org.uk/